


Evolutionary Psychology

by ariadnes_string



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-06
Updated: 2011-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-27 00:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Wait.  Wait.  This isn’t some kind of Jack London thing where you’re compelled to kill the injured pack member so that the rest of the pack can survive, is it?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evolutionary Psychology

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://grimm-kink.livejournal.com/452.html?thread=40900#t40900) at [grimm_kink](http://grimm-kink.livejournal.com/452.html?page=3&view=489156#comments) and originally posted there.
> 
> Also for the Wild Card square on my kink_bingo card: "magical trouble."

Nick ground to a halt about a mile away from the deserted cottage. He was breathing harder than he should have been for a run of that length, even over rough forest terrain, almost gasping for breath.

He put his hands on his knees trying to get his breathing under control. The cool evening air hit sweat-soaked skin, and for the first time he noticed the long rents the bramble thorns had torn in his jeans. There were tears along the front of his t-shirt as well, and a few thorns seemed to have pierced both jacket and shirt along his upper arms. His hands were cut to shreds and they stung as he pressed them into the denim.

The high bramble hedge had seemed easy to pass through when they went in to investigate the cottage, and almost impossibly difficult to escape from when they’d beaten a hasty retreat, realizing that they were going to need a better plan to deal whatever beast dwelt there. The twining plants had seemed almost alive.

Now, as the adrenaline of the run faded, Nick could feel the marks they’d left start to burn. His vision darkened and telescoped for a moment and he blinked to clear it.

“Nick?” Suddenly, Eddie was in front of him. He must have doubled back when he’d noticed Nick not following. “Come on, man, we gotta go.”

“Eddie.” Nick straightened with difficulty, willing his voice level. “You don’t think that hedge might have been, um, toxic, or anything? Poisonous?”

“Oh.” Eddie stared at him for a moment, as if he were taking in Nick’s damaged state for the first time. Then he turned his face away jerkily, almost involuntarily. Nick thought he saw another face ripple across it, but that might have just been the toxin. Things were starting to go a little blurry at the edges.

“Yeah.” Nick’s legs went out from under him abruptly, but he managed to sit heavily on the forest floor instead of face-planting. “I—uh—I’m maybe going to call someone. Might need some help getting out of here.”

After what seemed like a lengthy struggle he freed his phone from his pocket. But the screen blurred and prismed and he couldn’t seem to get his fingers to land on the right numbers. He waved it at Eddie, who was now crouching in front of him. “You call. Unless you really want to hump me out of here on your own.”

Eddie grimaced. His face was still doing that thing, and now his whole body seemed to be doing it too: shoulders contracting, neck lengthening, skin furring over. And then everything peeling back again, like a video clip in reverse. Nick squinted; the effect was kind of dizzying and that was the last thing he needed right now.

“You too?” he asked. “The toxin’s making you change, huh?”

Eddie shook his (thankfully human) head. “No. Not a mark on me. Must have tough skin. It’s just—Okay. There’s something about _blutbaden_ you might not know. Might not have been in Aunt Marie’s book—“

A wave of pain wracked through Nick. He grabbed Eddie’s wrist, gripping harder than he meant to. “Not the time, man. Just—Just call 911, okay? Save the Grimm stuff for later.”

“Yeah. Okay. Here’s the thing.” Eddie’s face had elongated; his mouth was more of a muzzle now, but the voice coming out of it was still Eddie’s own, if slightly more guttural. It was probably a hallucination, Nick decided, brought on by bramble toxin, but the effect was weirdly mesmerizing. “ _Blutbaden_ have a very strong pack instinct,” Eddie went on. “We can’t help it—it’s kind of a backbrain thing—evolutionary psychology, y’know?”

Nick didn’t know, probably wouldn’t have even if he hadn’t been so hazy, but he nodded anyway. He was still holding Eddie’s wrist, he noted. It seemed to have an anchoring effect against the poison that wanted to sweep him away.

“And, yeah, I haven’t had a pack for years. Been kind of a lone wolf, if you know what I mean.” Eddie laughed awkwardly. “But, uh, well, my, well, my _instinct_ seems to have decided you’re it. You’re my pack. And now you’re hurt. And I—well--”

Eddie looked him intently, as if Nick should know what he was talking about. A stab of unease went through Nick, made him more alert than he had been for the rest of the conversation.

“Wait. Wait. This isn’t some kind of Jack London thing where you’re compelled to kill the injured pack member so that the rest of the pack can survive, is it?”

“No. God, no.” Eddie’s long wolf-snout and flat wolf eyes managed to look affronted. “That man. The damage he’s done. No. I’m just saying we protect the pack. And we don’t do it in human form. We can’t help it.”

Nick wanted to say, “What’re you gonna do? Go pee on those brambles?” But the poison flared up in his blood, and world slipped away.

+++

He surfaced to an entreating sound halfway between a growl and a mewl. Something wet and rough lapped against his cheek and a waft of distinctly doggy breath hit his nose. It was the smell as much as the touch that had woken him. He waved an ineffectual hand at it and tried to huddle into himself, fighting the chill that had sunk into his bones. But the tongue kept lapping at him, the wet-nosed muzzle nudged at him, urging him to uncurl.

He gave in, though it was a huge effort to move even that much. The pain of the scrapes seemed to have retreated a bit, leaving in its wake a deep lassitude. And he was cold, so cold.

He looked up and saw a much darker sky through low branches. The wolf—Eddie; the wolf was Eddie, he reminded himself—seemed to have dragged him deeper into the undergrowth—shelter or cover or both.

It—he—nudged at him again, and then nipped delicately at the edge of his t-shirt, looking at him with black, preternaturally intelligent eyes, as if asking permission. Nick nodded without thinking. Apparently it was as easy to trust Eddie in wolf form as it was in human form. Or maybe it was just another effect of the bramble toxin.

The wolf pushed up his shirt using its nose and teeth and set to work on the long, shallow scrapes on his stomach. Nick lifted his head enough to watch for a moment; the cuts were jagged and angry-looking, already puffing up red around the edges, but Eddie was undeterred, moving along each one with his tongue, thorough and methodical. Exhausted by the effort of keeping his head up, Nick let it flop back against the loam of the forest floor.

It was a strange sensation, that thick, rough tongue, so entirely _not-human_ moving so intimately across his body. It hurt when Eddie dug into the cuts, trying to lave away the poison, but it wasn’t otherwise unpleasant. It was steady, almost rhythmic; and, more importantly, it was warm, the wolf’s breath like the blast of a tiny furnace. Nick knew he didn’t have the strength right now to resist; but even if he’d had, he wasn’t he’d have wanted to.

He let himself drift. He’d spent so much time thinking about the potential for violence in the _blutbad_ , or about his skills as a tracker, that he’d never really thought about the other things wolves did. They must explore new territory; they must care for their young; they must mate.

In an unsettling bit of synchronicity, he felt something warm and wet dig into his thigh near his groin. Nick started, and Eddie’s face was instantly over him, making that same mewling, inquiring noise deep in his throat. Belatedly, Nick realized that Eddie must have finished with the scrapes on his belly, and was starting in on the ones on his legs.

“No, no, it’s okay,” he whispered. “I don’t mind.” And to prove it, he forced his still clumsy fingers to undo his belt buckle and the button on his jeans.

Eddie seemed to get the idea. He used his teeth gently, oh so gently, to tug the jeans over Nick’s hips and past his knees. Some part of Nick’s brain registered that it was weird, beyond weird, to let a wolf undress him in the forest at night, but most of him had entirely succumbed to the situation, the wonder of this great beast focusing all its attention on him, caring for him, protecting their little pack of two.

He was soothed almost to sleep by the time Eddie nudged at him again—finished, apparently, and trying to get Nick to pull his clothes back on. Nick complied, but it took his last shred of energy. He’d slid into unconsciousness again before he’d finished.

+++

If he dreamt, he didn’t remember it, but he did wake again to find the moon higher in the sky. There was something under his cheek softer and warmer than leaves and dirt. Fur, he realized, rising and falling with the rhythm of Eddie’s breaths. The wolf had somehow maneuvered them into a tight ball, so that Eddie’s flank lay along Nick’s back, Nick’s head on the rise of his hackle, and his snout tucked into the space between Nick’s chin and shoulder. Nick tried to think about what this might mean, but all he could really register was that he was very warm and very tired. He dug his fingers through the wiry outer fur and buried them in the downy layer beneath, and slept again.

+++

When he woke for real, it was still night. Stones and twigs were digging into his back, but he thought it was probably the cold that had woken him. He sat up, lightheaded, but without the sickening sense of poison working its way through his system he’d had earlier.

A few feet away, Eddie sat cross-legged, looking up at the moon through entirely human eyes. When he heard Nick stir, he turned his face toward him, but didn’t smile.

“You okay?” he asked. “I was about to try and wake you.”

“Yeah. I’m good, I think. Whatever you did seems to have worked.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Eddie stood up. He paced back and forth for a moment, as if he were trying to get some emotion under control.

“I’m sorry,” he said, staring down at Nick. “That was unforgivable. You were hurt. Who knows what that bramble shit was—nothing I’ve ever encountered before, that’s for sure. It could’ve been lethal, for all we knew. And what did I do? Get you proper medical attention? No. Get you somewhere warm and clean? No. Revert back the oldest, most atavistic behavior possible? Yessirree, Bob.” He turned away from Nick but kept talking. “Reformed, Monroe? Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”

It hurt Nick more than he would’ve thought to hear Eddie castigating himself like that. He pushed himself to standing, though the world whirled about him for a moment before he could get his balance.

“Eddie,” he said firmly. “Stop it. You stayed with me. You cleaned me up and you kept me warm. And I’m fine, really. Let’s not think about the other stuff now, okay? Let’s just get out of here before Juliette gets Hank to send in a search party.”

Very slowly, Eddie faced him again. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, Nick suddenly very conscious that “the other stuff” might mean more than the wound-cleaning or even Eddie’s admission about the pack instinct. He swayed slightly with a sense of the gravity of it all.

Instantly, Eddie was next to him, a hand under his elbow.

“You sure you’re okay to walk out of here?” he asked.

“Yeah. Just might need a little help, is all.”

“You got it, brother. And I’m driving you straight to the ER as soon as we get back to the car. Get you fixed up with some heavy-duty antibiotics.”

“Why?” Nick said, as he let Eddie steer him in the direction of home. “What about that thing about a dog’s mouth being ten times cleaner than a human’s?”

“Uh-uh—saw a _Mythbusters_ episode about that once, and let me tell you—“


End file.
